Commentaire sur La Genèse 8:9

AND THE DOVE FOUND NO REST. It is not customary for fowl to rest on the tops of the high mountains on the earth which are bare of trees and surely not when the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Therefore, the dove found no rest suitable for her. But as soon as she saw the trees she went her own way¹⁵⁵Verse 12. for in their branches she would build her nest.

כי מים על פני כל הארץ, even on the tops of the mountains which had become visible, everything was still thoroughly wet so that even there לא מצא מנוח לכף רגלו, it could not find a resting place for its foot.

וישלח ידו ויקחה ויבא אותה אל התבה. He extended his hand, took her (the dove) and brought her to him into the ark. The verse tells us that the dove was exhausted from its mission, not having found a place to land. Noach was worried that the dove did not have strength enough to enter the ark on her own and would fall into the water and drown.

ולא מצאה היונה מנוח, “but the dove did not find a place to rest the ball of its foot on.” Even though one of our sages holds that the deluge left the Land of Israel unaffected, the dove did not descend there on account of the heat. The giant Og took refuge in the vicinity of the ark as the immediate area around the ark was cooler than the atmosphere at large. The truth is that –as Nachmanides writes- that even though the deluge did not flood the Holy Land directly and the rains did not fall there, water from the surrounding countries flooded the Holy Land also, seeing that the Holy Land was not enclosed by a water-proof fence which could keep out the waters. The Biblical verse supporting the view that the waters of the deluge did not descend on the Holy Land, only speaks of ארץ מטוהרה לא גושמה ביום זעם, “a land which remained pure and did not experience destructive rain on the day of (G’d’s) anger.” (Ezekiel 22,24) The verse did not mention that no water penetrated the Holy Land during the deluge, only that it did not endure the rain, and that the subterranean wells did not gush forth from underneath it.